Tag Archives: Virginia

From the Afterlife at Grandma’s to a River in the Woods in Two Dreams

Posted on by
Reply

Or was it one long crazy dream?

Awoke one Saturday morning in late August this year from two vivid and distinctly different back to back dreams with faint memories of an earlier third. The two dreams flowed one into the other. It was as if I was in one dream and then lucidly recognized within the dream I was yet in another dream. To be clear, I did not unconsciously exhibit any powers to change or redirect the event of my dreams. Nor did I consciously manifest any such powers to affect such changes. Instead, I ran forward into the future, if you will, to experience what may occur from my own curiosity. The urgency of the moment within these two dreams felt so real and compelling. In weird, strange, and bizarre ways, yet in a loving way, my dreams took me across different timelines from California with an ex-lover into the Afterlife to chat with the dead and with a movie star and my youngest to paddle a muddy river in Virginia. Felt mind bending, confusing, and loving.

Continue reading →

Finding Childhood’s UFO Sphere Picture

Posted on by
Reply

Hunting down a long-ago Machine of Ghosts

Image of metallic spherical UFO/UAP found online that closely resembled the one the Bass Family saw over their Virginia farm in the late 1960s. The only difference is the sphere witnessed by the author’s family was silvery and stainless steel in color.

When I first came upon the image recreating what a particular spherical UFO/UAP looked like from a particular event, I felt exhilaration! It’s the first clear, uncluttered image of exactly what I remember what the UFO looked like my entire immediate family of origin witnessed near our home in rural Virginia during the late 1960s. I was an elementary school farm boy back then, and yet I recall the event as clear as if it happened yesterday. Continue reading →

This is home now, far from home: Snapshots of Dad on the U.S.S. Midway

Posted on by
Reply

“This is home, and so big too.”

Pictures are also from Bill Bass’s time in Boot Camp in Great Lakes and elsewhere.

The U.S.S. Midway, my father’s ship, passes a smoking volcano while sailing across the Mediterranean, 1952. Home away from home, and far away indeed. The volcano is Mt. Vesuvius on the edge of Naples, Italy.

Bill Bass, U.S. Navy. 1948-1952. My Dad before he even met my Mother. These pictures survived my house burning down in March 2010 and thus some damage remains evident. Life is messy.

These picture frame glimpses of my late father, William Merritt Bass, known as Bill, from old fotos and papers recovered from my 2010 house fire. He served in the United States Navy from 1948 to 1952. Bill Bass started out, as did many new sailors, at the historic Recruit Training Command Center at Naval Station Great Lakes. This was boot camp, in the midst of a bitter cold winter, located on Lake Michigan, in the upper NE corner of Illinois between Chicago and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The majority of his Navy years, however, was spent upon the U.S.S. Midway, an legendary aircraft carrier rich in history. Born, raised, and educated in Virginia, Dad lived his entire life in his native Commonwealth except during his time in the military and when he was traveling. Dad was proud of his service to his country during the early Cold War.

Continue reading →

Make DC the State of Douglass

Posted on by
1

Expand self-determination for people in U.S. territories…without any further delay

People of America, fellow citizens of our constitutional democratic republic, let us grant DC statehood. Let’s add the District of Columbia to the Union as a state and rename it the State of Douglass. Let’s forward similar processes with Puerto Rico and other territories. All equally deserve to be liberated from anachronistic shackles of population requirements especially on islands and other areas constrained by geography so they may all engage with their fellow Americans as full citizens able to vote for their President and Vice-President of our United States. Yes, let’s grant DC statehood now.

The District of Columbia is constrained by geography, history, and territorial conflicts. DC can exist as a state, however small, simply as it is, especially as it’s population is larger than several other much larger current states. DC can be a state without any additional territory, altho it would be to the benefit of DC to have more territory. Having a larger, viable state in and around the current DC, while a territorial, voting, and tax loss in the short term for Virginia and Maryland, would most likely in the long run be in the best interests of the greater region including those neighboring states. Continue reading →

Response to a Concerned Small Business Owner over 15 NOW

Posted on by
Reply

Earlier this month I posted a link on one of my social media sites to an essay I wrote the night before, “Yes, $15 an hour minimum wage, NOW!” Among the people who responded along a spectrum between yes and no were two from my native state of Virginia. Let’s call one of them Brigid, which, of course, is not her real name. Brigid, a progressive liberal more radical than many and as mellow as a Summer pond at twilight, expressed concern about us activists moving too fast to raise the minimum wage. She thought proponents for $15 now would be wise to slow down and take more time. After all, why rush it and mess it up for all of us?

More captivating, however, was a wrenching inquiry from a friend of mine back East. He was a small business owner who ran a small but bustling bakery and café. My friend, let’s call him Isaac, declared raising the minimum wage up to $15 an hour “would put” him “out of business in one month.” Unless, he said, he jacked up his prices. I could hear him as he pounded his fist upon the countertop as he continued. “The socialist-workers rights-stick-it-to-the-man person in me loves it, but I am the man here. This seriously would break me,” he wrote. “Why do this if prices just rise in concert with pay?”

Continue reading →

Sleeping with Ghosts on the Appalachian Trail

Posted on by
Reply

Ruminations, Romance, and the Lives of a Family Long Dead

Story and Photographs by William Dudley Bass

With extra stories & photos added later about recovering the original 2001 published article with related media controversies, found 1991 pictures once lost, new history of the old homestead with a “new” trail shelter, and of the Pregnant Rhinos’ eldest daughter’s 2015 attempt to thruhike the AT. There’s often more to a story than the tale itself.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

In late May 1991, almost three months into our odyssey along the Appalachian Trail, my wife and I planned to sleep among ghosts. Old-timey Virginia ghosts. It seemed like a fitting thing to do while walking across our home state, a journey as rich with rumination as it was with hardship and joy.

Gwen and I had embarked on the first day of spring from the top of Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to backpack the whole Appalachian Trail end to end. The AT, as we hikers called it, or simply “the Trail,” stretches more than 2,000 miles northwards across 14 states to the summit of mile-high Mt. Katahdin in north-central Maine. Almost a quarter of the Trail passes through the Old Dominion, making Virginia home to the longest section of the AT, more than any other state. Gwen and I took six-and-a-half months to backpack the whole Trail, climbing Katahdin in early October on the day after our third wedding anniversary.

Rich in both history and wildlife, the Appalachian Trail is an intersection of people and wilderness. Those who backpack end-to-end in one push are known as “thruhikers,” while those who attempt to complete the whole thing in stages are called “section hikers.” Most take on trail names. Gwen and I were thruhikers, as such a distinct minority among the day hikers, weekenders, and picnickers. We called ourselves the Pregnant Rhinos.

Our trail name arose from a backpacking trip out West the previous year, when we got teased about the huge new internal-frame expedition packs bulging from our backs. “Damn, y’all look like a coupla pregnant rhinoceroses,” exclaimed a teenage boy, his own rickety, external-frame pack jangling with pots and pans and sloppy blankets.

Continue reading →